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Finally – finally.
She hasn’t been this happy since – she’s never been this happy. Maybe when she'd had Charlie? She remembers he’d made her happy, remembers those little shivers of excitement when he’d looked at her with those beautiful warm eyes and that smile, like she was something precious, like she brightened his life the way he brightened hers – but every memory of him always melts away at the edges, coloured in ash, bitter tasting, seen through the way it ended. And sure, they’d had happiness in Rue Royale, before Charlie, all those years ago, but that’s all shaky and coloured in red through the way that had ended, and anyways, she’d been nothing but a child then, caught up in a strangely innocent happiness that in hindsight had always been conditional, on her being fledgling, lesser, staying in her place which had always had to be beneath Lestat. That happiness, back when she’d thought she had a family? It'd been nothing like what she’s feeling right now. Community, real community in the hunt, and her an equal part of it all – when she tears into someone’s neck, she feels it reverberate through their shared blood lust, feels her hunger grow through everyone else's, feels the satisfaction in every drop of blood, in the beautiful violence of it, and she’s no longer alone, no longer clawing against this yearning loneliness with only her brother to fill the void. Fucking finally, she’s found other vampires, and it’s better than she could’ve possibly imagined.
She no longer cares that Louis didn’t join them; at most, she pities him – let him stay out there, satisfy his lust another way. She may never get to have love the way he can, but with all that guilt he carries about being a vampire, he’ll never understand this elation she’s feeling right now – the taste of fear when the feasting guests find that they have become the feast, bones breaking under Estelle’s hands, finger by delicate finger, people turned to puppets under Santiago’s gaze, just as skilled at it here as he is on stage, delighted laughter bubbling from her at his performance, spilled champagne turning red as screams and pleas turn to wordless gurgles, gushing arteries a blood fountain to be shared, scent of useless gunpowder hanging in the air as undeniable power spills from them all, together, joy – she laughs.
She loves being a vampire.